Education for Information

For many years academic librarians have been involved in the delivery of library instruction programs. Most of these librarians however have the impression that when students arrive at the university their knowledge of the information seeking process is quite limited. This paper presents a summary of a research which took place in the province of Quebec (Canada). As stated in the title, in essence the research question was: When entering the first year of undergraduate study, how information literate are the students? Over 3,000 participants returned a mail questionnaire representing a response rate of 56.9%. While 12 of the 15 universities participating to the study were French speaking, 3 of them were English speaking, adding bilingualism (French/English) to an already distinctive, highly cooperative, research design.

Despite the limited number of variables (20), the results indicate that for many respondents, their knowledge of the basic elements characterizing the information seeking process is rather limited. For example, it was found that for 11 of the 20 variables under study, the highest rate of correct answers provided was less than 36%. For these variables, the rate of correct responses ranged from 12.7% to 35.8%.

As networked digital information proliferates and modern society's need to have access to information irrespective of location rises, the education needed for the digerati, defined loosely as the digital intelligentsia, the whole class of expert digital information professionals, becomes an important area about which all information professionals should stay informed. This paper describes the three concepts – interdisciplinarity, interactivity, and interoperability – that are an integral part of digital library research and their use in the curriculum development, teaching, and learning of a specific area of study within Library and Information Science (LIS), namely knowledge organization (KO). KO, studied intellectually, self-referentially, and immersively, it is argued, can provide the foundation for the modern digerati.

This paper investigates the perceptions of the heads of 12 LIS schools on KM education. These heads from North America, Europe and the Pacific region had either been offering KM courses or had an apparent interest in such programs. Data about perceptions were gathered on the nature of their KM coursework, KM positions their graduates might target, interdisciplinary partnerships, strategic partnerships with industry, and practical difficulties in the introduction of KM courses. They were asked to pinpoint difficulties in the areas of faculty availability, student enrollment, resource availability, creation of partnerships, working with professional associations, and interactions with industry. There existed a strong interest in offering KM courses, cultivating collaborations with business and computing schools, and developing strategic partnerships with industry.